The Great Bend High School football team’s anemic offense took several strides forward on Friday night.
The Panthers still fell 28-21 against Garden City in Western Athletic Conference action.
“Our kids are improving,” GBHS head coach Tony Crough said. “We still had a lot of negative plays, but before we made a bunch of negative plays and didn’t have any positive plays to balance out.
“Tonight, we stacked up the positive plays, and just improved. According to the stats, we outgained them. Just special teams turnovers and offense turnovers just got us.”
Things went exactly the way the Panthers wanted from the beginning.
They won the coin toss.
Elected to start on defense.
After giving up one first down on a 13-yard pass, the defense tightened up to force a punt after three consecutive incomplete passes.
Then the pressure was on the offense.
Trent Uselton delivered.
On the first play on offense, Uselton, who had 109 yards and had to come out at halftime because of a concussion, burst through the defense  for a 73-yard touchdown.
Armando Dominguez split the uprights to make it 7-0, and Great Bend held a lead for the first time in 2014.
“I didn’t know he could run that fast,” Crough said. “That’s the first one we’ve had all year, so it was just nice to see. That changes the mentality of the team. When you start the game off positive like that, it carries you for awhile.
“When you have a young, inexperienced team, you got to have good things happen.”
That lead stood for the rest of the first quarter.
Within a minute into the second quarter, Garden City quarterback took a 1-yard plunge into the end zone to even the score.
Nunez scored again, six minutes later on a 10-yard run.
Garden City made it to the Great Bend 34-yard line again before halftime, and were looking to put the game away.
Nunez threw an interception into the hands of Brady Michel, who returned it to the Garden City 35-yard line.
Two plays later, Panthers quarterback Shade Wondra connected with a leaping Bryce Lytle in the end zone with 25 seconds remaining in the first half.
The score was knotted at 14 heading into the locker room at halftime.
“Shade’s getting more confident,” Crough said. “This is only his third game at quarterback. He played JV as a sophomore, but that was two years ago. Third game at quarterback and fifth varsity game ever. He played two at linebacker last year.
“He’s just getting better. Offensive line is getting better at protecting him.”
Wondra completed 7 of 16 passes for 119 yards. He threw one interception. Lytle led receivers with three catches for 73 yards.
“We’ve found some nice little targets,” Crough said. “Bryce Lytle, man that kid is just a playmaker. We found that out in practice and we’re trying to get him the ball.
“Shade just threw a dart to Lytle, and that kid just brought it in.”
Garden City running back Jared Koster, who rushed for 115 yards on 11 carries, had two touchdown runs in the third quarter to give Garden City a 28-14 lead.
As the Buffaloes were knocking on the door again, 17 yards away from the goalline, Great Bend came away with another takeaway.
The Panthers’ defense had three fumble recoveries and one interception to make it 11 takeaways in three games this season.
“I feel sorry for our defense, because you look at the points given up per game, and it’s just not indicative of the type of defense that we have,” Crough said. “Special teams errors and offensive turnovers are putting our defense in some bad spots, but man, they’re getting after it and playing well.”
For the second time in the game, Great Bend flipped a turnover into a touchdown.
On a fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line, Wondra lowered his shoulder and blasted his way into the end zone to make it 28-21.
Great Bend had a number of chances to tie things up, but it couldn’t close the gap.